Vegan Is Love

Vegan is Love, Having Heart and Taking Action, is Ruby Roth’s second children’s book about living a vegan lifestyle.

Ruby is able to take potentially complex issues and talk about them in a way that is not only understandable to kids, but interesting as well.

Vegan is Love explains how we can live without using animals for food, clothing, or fun, and how it benefits not only the animals, but the environment as well.

Most children have an innate love of animals, and I’ve heard story after story about kids bursting into tears after learning their chicken nuggets, were actually made out of real chickens. I think children are quite capable of making a lot of decisions about their lives, and what they are comfortable with on their own, and they deserve to know the facts.

My children are not forced to be vegan. They know the facts, and they are free to choose to eat meat if they wish. And in fact they have a few times, and then they go back to not wanting to harm animals to eat when they have so many other great options.

There has been harsh criticism of this book in the media.

Child psychologist Jennifer Hart Steen told Matt Lauer on the “Today” show that, “there’s so much fear presented in the book and if you would just give it to a child as a children’s book they don’t understand it. So now they’re just going to be afraid.”

Roth told “Today” that it is not her intention to instill fear. “If it’s too scary to talk about, the reality of where those pieces of meat come from, then it’s certainly too scary to eat,” she said. Instead, the book is supposed to encourage “compassion and action.”

Critics are concerned over potential development of eating disorders, and malnutrition.

I find it shocking that people are so concerned about this issue, and then they turn around and take their kids to McDonald’s, and give them food out of boxes, and bags, with artificial colors, and flavors. Perhaps they’re worried that vegan children are eating too much kale?

When I asked Ruby what her thoughts are on the criticism in the media, she told me that “In general, most opposition to veganism comes down to ignorance, fear, or industry collusion. The majority of people have no idea about the level of disease and abuse in the meat and dairy industries, parents fear abandoning the standard American diet, and both medical schools and major networks work directly with the animal agriculture and pharmaceutical industries. We’re just at the beginning of introducing the mainstream to the merits of veganism”.